Cartography is the study and practice of making and using maps. Combining science, aesthetics and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
A geographic information system (GIS) consists of integrated computer hardware and software that store, manage, analyze, edit, output, and visualize geographic data. Much of this often happens within a spatial database, however, this is not essential to meet the definition of a GIS. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system also to include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, the body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Earth and other planets. Remote sensing is used in numerous fields, including geophysics, geography, land surveying and most Earth science disciplines ; it also has military, intelligence, commercial, economic, planning, and humanitarian applications, among others.
Image analysis or imagery analysis is the extraction of meaningful information from images; mainly from digital images by means of digital image processing techniques. Image analysis tasks can be as simple as reading bar coded tags or as sophisticated as identifying a person from their face.
Geomatics is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as the "discipline concerned with the collection, distribution, storage, analysis, processing, presentation of geographic data or geographic information". Under another definition, it consists of products, services and tools involved in the collection, integration and management of geographic (geospatial) data. It is also known as geomatic(s) engineering. Surveying engineering was the widely used name for geomatic(s) engineering in the past.
Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 Research and Dovepress. It is a division of Informa plc, a United Kingdom–based publisher and conference company.
Geoinformatics is the science and technology that develop and use data, software, and computing facilities in the cyberinfrastructure ecosystem to address the needs of geosciences and related branches of science and engineering.
The American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) was an American professional association representing the interests of those engaged in measuring and communicating geospatial data.
Geographic information science or geoinformation science is a scientific discipline at the crossroads of computational science, social science, and natural science that studies geographic information, including how it represents phenomena in the real world, how it represents the way humans understand the world, and how it can be captured, organized, and analyzed. It is a sub-field of geography, specifically part of technical geography. It has applications to both physical geography and human geography, although its techniques can be applied to many other fields of study as well as many different industries.
Eman Ghoneim is an Egyptian/American geomorphologist. In March 2006, Dr. Ghoneim, together with Farouk El-Baz, discovered the Kebira Crater, a possible impact crater (astrobleme) in the Sahara. In 2007, while processing microwave space data, she discovered an ancient Mega-Lake (30,750 km2) buried beneath the sand of the Great Sahara in Northern Darfur, Sudan.
The International Cartographic Association (ICA), is an organization formed of national member organizations, to provide a forum for issues and techniques in cartography and geographic information science (GIScience). ICA was founded on June 9, 1959, in Bern, Switzerland. The first General Assembly was held in Paris in 1961. The mission of the International Cartographic Association is to promote the disciplines and professions of cartography and GIScience in an international context. To achieve these aims, the ICA works with national and international governmental and commercial bodies, and with other international scientific societies.
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as a title of a book by Greek scholar Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."
Remote sensing techniques in archaeology are an increasingly important component of the technical and methodological tool set available in archaeological research. The use of remote sensing techniques allows archaeologists to uncover unique data that is unobtainable using traditional archaeological excavation techniques.
The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) is an international non-governmental organization that enhances international cooperation between the worldwide organizations with interests in the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. Originally named International Society for Photogrammetry (ISP), it was established in 1910, and is the oldest international umbrella organization in its field, which may be summarized as addressing “information from imagery”.
The Department of Geography and The Environment is a division of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The Department was founded in 1949 as the 'Department of Geography' and was renamed the 'Department of Geography and the Environment' in 2004. It was the first Geography Department established in Texas to award doctoral degrees.
Barry N. Haack is an American geographer and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He is an international authority on remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), and technology transfer from developed to developing nations. Haack is a visiting physical scientist at the United States Geological Survey and an elected Fellow in the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). Through education and collaboration, Haack has influenced the careers of scientists and decision makers from many United States federal agencies and in universities and agencies in nearly thirty countries. He has held formal arrangements with the United Nations, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, NASA, the European Space Agency, the National Geographic Society, and many other international organizations and country governmental agencies.
Pedometric mapping, or statistical soil mapping, is data-driven generation of soil property and class maps that is based on use of statistical methods. Its main objectives are to predict values of some soil variable at unobserved locations, and to access the uncertainty of that estimate using statistical inference i.e. statistically optimal approaches. From the application point of view, its main objective is to accurately predict response of a soil-plant ecosystem to various soil management strategies—that is, to generate maps of soil properties and soil classes that can be used for other environmental models and decision-making. It is largely based on applying geostatistics in soil science, and other statistical methods used in pedometrics.
Muki Haklay FAcSS is Professor of Geographical Information Science at the Department of Geography in University College London (UCL).
Technical geography is the branch of geography that involves using, studying, and creating tools to obtain, analyze, interpret, understand, and communicate spatial information. The other branches, most commonly limited to human geography and physical geography, can usually apply the concepts and techniques of technical geography. However, the methods and theory are distinct, and a technical geographer may be more concerned with the technological and theoretical concepts than the nature of the data. Thus, the spatial data types a technical geographer employs may vary widely, including human and physical geography topics, with the common thread being the techniques and philosophies employed. To accomplish this, technical geographers often create their own software or scripts, which can then be applied more broadly by others. While technical geography mostly works with quantitative data, the techniques and technology can be applied to qualitative geography, differentiating it from quantitative geography. Within the branch of technical geography are the major and overlapping subbranches of geographic information science, geomatics, and geoinformatics.
